COSTA MESA, CA.- Silver’s record price of over $60/troy ounce wasn’t the only new record set in the world of coins and precious metals today. A newly discovered specimen of the famous 1804 dollar, “The King of American Coins,” brought $6 million at an auction held this afternoon at Griffin Studios in the Costa Mesa headquarters of Stack’s Bowers Galleries, the country’s leading specialty auction house for rare coins. The legendary rarity was consigned by the heirs of James A. Stack, Sr. (no relation to the Stack family who founded Stack’s Bowers Galleries in 1935), a New York collector who died in 1951.

Despite intense interest in the 1804 dollar among American coin collectors dating back to its first publication in 1842, this specimen had never before been documented or sold publicly. No fewer than three full length books on the 1804 dollar have been published since the 1960s, but this coin’s existence was a shock to the worldwide numismatic community. Until it was consigned to Stack’s Bowers Galleries, no numismatic experts knew of this coin, which was quietly acquired by Mr. Stack sometime in the 1940s and preserved by his heirs ever since.

The price of $6 million, representing a high bid or “hammer price” of $5 million with the industry-standard 20% buyer’s premium, nearly tripled the previous auction record for a Class III 1804 dollar ($2,300,000, set in 2009). 1804 dollars are categorized in three classes, representing so-called “Originals” or Class I coins, the unique Class II “restrike” with plain edge in the Smithsonian Institution, and Class III “restrikes” like this one.

“Only six coins have ever brought more than the James A. Stack 1804 dollar,” noted the coin’s cataloger, Stack’s Bowers Galleries Director of Numismatic Americana John Kraljevich. Stack’s Bowers Galleries sold three of them, including the finest known Class I 1804 dollar, which brought $7.68 million in August 2021. The world record price for any rare coin, the only 1933 $20 gold piece declared legal to own by the United States government, brought $18,872,250 in a Sotheby’s sale in June 2021. The only other coin to pass the $10 million mark was the finest known 1794 dollar, the first American dollar coin, which brought $10,016,875 in Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ January 2013 sale.

Initially called “The King of American Coins” by Lithuanian-born Texas coin dealer B. Max Mehl in 1941, the 1804 dollar has a backstory whose convolutions thrill those devoted to the hobby of coin collecting. While silver dollars were struck at the United States Mint in Philadelphia in 1804, none were made with that date. Thirty years later, when President Andrew Jackson requested sets of American coins to present as gifts to crowned heads of state in Asia, the Mint created brand new dollars for the task that bore the date 1804, accidentally creating a major rarity. The example presented to the Sultan of Muscat by Jackson’s administration during an 1835 treaty signing sold in a Stack’s Bowers Galleries auction in 2021 for $7.68 million. The population of known examples reached 15 coins in 1962, when the example presented to the King of Siam — the same figure made famous by the musical “The King and I” — was discovered in London.

When coin collectors got wind of the coin’s manufacture in 1842 via a book published by U.S. Mint insiders, they clamored for examples of their own. In an environment of graft and corruption, political appointees at the Mint made some specially for coin collectors beginning in 1858. Caught red-handed trying to foist new coins with old dates on collectors at high prices for their own gain, the crooked insiders lost their jobs when Abraham Lincoln appointed new employees in 1861. But by 1866, the same appointees returned to their positions and started their enterprise again. They succeeded in selling four of the “restrike” 1804 dollars to collectors. Experts from the Stack’s Bowers Galleries staff and independent rare coin researchers have come to the conclusion that this specimen is a coin that one of those responsible, Mint Director A. Loudon Snowden, kept for himself as a souvenir.

“It’s the finest of the four restrike 1804 dollars outside of a museum,” Kraljevich noted. “It was issued with details superior to the others because of who it was made for. Today it’s the prettiest one any collector can aspire to own by a significant margin.”

Among other coins sold today from the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection, an example of the 1794 dollar, the first dollar coin struck by the United States, brought $1,020,000, setting a new world record for a circulated example of the coin. Specially struck “Proof” examples of double eagle ($20 gold piece) coins from 1854 and 1859 brought $900,000 each to lead the gold coins. An Uncirculated or Mint State 1795 dollar brought $600,000. In total, 54 lots from the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection brought $14,818,200, with 48 lots still to sell as of this writing.